Category: Quote of the Week

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that’s what makes you strong.”

-Sarah Dessen

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Sarah Dessen is a New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen Young Adult fiction novels. Her books have been published in over thirty countries and have sold millions of copies worldwide. She has won numerous awards for her novels including the ALA “Best Fiction for Young Adults,” and the Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Dessen worked on her first novel, That Summer, while waitressing in her hometown in North Carolina. She has also taught at the University of North Carolina. Dessen’s work deals with the change in youth’s personality as they go through tragedy or loss. She writes about isolation, emotional distance among family members, and a progressive change in people’s personality, among others.

Dessen has a new novel, Once and for All, that has been released just last month called about a woman who helps brides perfect their special day, despite having lost her first love in a tragic accident. She may have a second-chance at love when she meets someone new.

Marlee Matlin is an American actress and the only deaf performer to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work on the film, Children of a Lesser God. She has also received a Golden Globe award, 4 Emmy nominations, and made her Broadway stage debut in Spring Awakening in 2015.

Matlin, deaf since 18 months old, is also a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf. She has also As of January 2015, Matlin also acted as the American Civil Liberties Union’s celebrity ambassador for disability rights. In 2007, Matlin was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Gallaudet University, a private university for the education of the Deaf and hard of hearing in Washington, D.C.

Matlin has also published several books of fiction, such as Deaf Child Crossing, as well as a memoir, I’ll Scream Later, where in it she describes her drug abuse, her rocky, physically abusive relationship, and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.

Chuck Palahniuk, author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was very famously adapted into a feature film, is an American novelist and freelance journalist. Palahniuk describes his work as “transgressional” fiction.

Palahniuk often wrote his books with distinct similarities. The characters represent people who have been marginalized in one way or another by society, and often react with self-destructive aggressiveness. Beginning with Lullaby, the style of his novels changed to mostly satirical horror stories.

Palahniuk is the recipient of the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel both for Fight Club) and the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for Lullaby. He was also nominated for the 1999 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel for Survivor and the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Lullaby in 2002 and Haunted in 2005.

Born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, Pablo Neruda became known as a poet at 10 years old. Neruda wrote in various styles including: surrealist poems, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems like his 1924 collection, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.

Neruda was regarded as “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language,” by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez and “one of the 26 writers central to the Western tradition” in The Western Canonby Harold Bloom. Neruda received numerous accolades including the International Peace Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Neruda was a close advisor to Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende and in fact, Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency in 1970, but ended up giving his support to Allende, who later won the election as the first democratically elected socialist head of state. Allende then appointed Neruda as the Chilean ambassador to France from 1970–1972.

Oscar Wilde, an Irish playwright, poet, and novelist, became one of London’s most popular playwrights during his time with plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest.

Wilde spoke highly of aestheticism and made attempts at several forms of literature including publishing a book poetry, lecturing on the new “English Renaissance in Art” in the United States and Canada, and became a journalist when he returned to London. Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day, known for his wit and flamboyant dress.

While The Importance of Being Earnest was still running in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The trial revealed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials, Wilde was convicted and imprisoned for two years. After he was released, Wilde left to France and began his final work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating the harsh realities of prison life.

One of the greatest avant-garde authors of the 19th century, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette—most commonly referred to as simply Colette—was a French novelist, essayist, and performer. Collete made herself into a famous creative and feminist icon by writing for a female audience, evoking passion and sensuality in her works, and for being unapologetically proud of her sexual and personal agency in a time where such a point of view was not common for women.

Her first husband took the credit for the first four books Colette wrote, the Claudine series, which were based on her own life experiences. Fortunately, though she never profited in her lifetime from her stories, she was later recognized for writing them. Colette was also able to get full-credit and copyright of all the books that she wrote after, such as her best known novel Gigi,L’ingenue libertine (The Innocent Libertine), and Cheri. Her most critically acclaimed novel is La Vagabonde (The Vagabond). She is the second woman to have ever been given the title of grand officer of the Legion of Honor, which she earned for her great influence in France.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most recognized and respected American literary writers of our time. With an extensive history of writing and reading since her childhood, Oates has published over 40 novels, memoirs, plays, and poetry. She’s been honored for her contributions to the writing community by receiving the PEN Center USA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Humanities Medal, PEN/Malamud Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Short Story, the Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement, the Pushcart Prize, and many others awards.

Jonathan Safran Foer is an American novelist and activist with Polish roots. Foer began to seriously pursue writing as a career after working closely with his thesis advisor, Joyce Carol Oates, during his time at Princeton. His thesis won him Princeton’s Senior Creative Writing Thesis Prize, which he then expanded and made into his first novel, Everything is Illuminated. Foer followed this up with what is perhaps his most well-known book,Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which incorporates visuals to tell a story surrounding the 9/11 tragedy. His most recent novel, Here I Am, is a fictional retelling of a family inspired by his own life. Other projects he’s worked on include his nonfiction animal rights activism book Eating Animals, and his play on Bruno Schulz‘s book The Street of Crocodiles by blocking out text to create a new story in Tree of Codes.

“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”

Charged with powerful themes that inspire the reader to question their own morality, the power of love, and humanity’s purpose, all the stories written by Madeleine L’Engle are as memorable for their plots and writing as they are their emotional impact. L’Engle had a long and prosperous career in writing, winning a plethora of awards and honorary degrees over her career for her published novels and poetry collections (of which she wrote over 50). She wrote up until the end of her life in 2007, at the age of 88.

Robbie Myers has been the editor-in-chief of Elle since 2000, and she’s forged her way to the position after an extensive career in many other areas of magazine publishing. From being an editorial assistant at Rolling Stone, assisting Andy Warhol at Interview, and working in editorial departments at InStyle and Seventeen among countless other magazines, Myers has earned the reputation of an industry leader and fashion icon.

Myers prides herself in how well she works with an supports her staff. Since working at Elle, she’s also made it her goal to ensure that content is on multiple media platforms and can survive in other mediums outside traditional printed magazine publishing. Myers is also not afraid to address serious political and social issues at Elle and has rather famously addressed an article from The New Republicthat challenged the idea that women’s magazines could not do ‘serious journalism’ or write ‘literary articles,’ further gaining her much deserved respect.

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